Cancelled Sustainability in Disciplinary Contexts

How has your discipline incorporated sustainability concepts and practices in the past? How is it doing so now? Why is that the case? How effective have those efforts been? Could they be sharpened? No matter where you are in your academic journey, you are likely being encouraged to look for ways to apply your disciplinary knowledge to one or more of the United Nations’ seventeen sustainability goals addressing ‘wicked’ socio-environmental problems. This highly interactive summer school offers students at all levels and from all disciplines the opportunity to place their disciplinary and work-place efforts into broader sustainability contexts, especially as they address environment-related goals related to the atmosphere, land, and water (goals 6, 7, 11-15).

The course will be organized into two parts: a four-week on-line part (25 hours per week) and a two-week on-campus part (full time). During the on-line part, students will be introduced to materials that integrate their particular academic backgrounds with sustainability goals via online teaching, readings, discussion groups, and tasks to prepare for the on-campus portion. They will have the opportunity to coordinate with the instructor on their disciplinary and research interests as they are related to specific and more general sustainable development goals. During the on-campus portion, students will be placed into interdisciplinary groups, as they tackle a current problem of joint interest and investigate how their disciplinary/work-place approaches could be leveraged to help solve it.